The present invention generally relates to roadside post supports, and more particularly to safety breakaway ground-mounted post support assemblies which release the post upon impact by a vehicle.
In the interest of highway safety, it has been suggested that highway signs, utility poles and the like should be so constructed that damage to a vehicle and injury to its passengers upon impact with such an obstruction be minimized as much as possible. For this purpose, various types of breakaway couplings and yieldable supports for signs and posts have been suggested as exemplified by U.S. Pat. Nos. 2,961,204 and 3,521,917.
A more sophisticated breakaway coupling assembly is shown and described in my U.S. Pat. No. 3,637,244.
The coupling assembly disclosed in this patent was designed to solve drawbacks in the existing technology by allowing for all directional impact angles, consistence of performance without periodic adjustments, use of the existing types of footings and posts, and no adverse effects to vehicle impact when wind load is present on the sign at impact. While successful, the coupling assembly of my earlier patent was overly complex and had a high error risk in selection and placement of parts, thereby increasing the chance of field error in installation and maintenance, which error could defeat the safety feature which the assembly was intended to provide.
An improved breakaway assembly is disclosed in my above co-pending application Ser. No. 470,371. The improved assembly substantially reduces the number of parts thereby reducing the chances of field error. Additionally, since fewer parts must be handled, the assemblies can be installed more conveniently and more efficiently.
This Continuation-In-Part application further discloses the principles set forth in the co-pending application as well as discloses additional structural embodiments which incorporate my invention.